Indian Branches / Sep 2004 Contributor: Mumbai Branch Master Hiroyuki Kato

Shorinji Kempo's Workshops in New Delhi

Shorinji Kempo Workshops were held in New Delhi, India, from Saturday, August 21 to Tuesday, August 24, 2004,

We have three branches in India namely, Chennai, Nagpur, and Mumbai. Although New Delhi is the capital, and one of the biggest cities in India, we don't have a branch out there. In order to introduce the techniques and philosophy of Shorinji Kempo we held these workshops out there.

This was the first time for Indian Branch masters to get together and introduce Shorinji Kempo for the people in New Delhi. We had wonderful experience and chance to co-ordinate with each other and perform these workshops. We also appreciate great support from Japan Foundation, New Delhi to conduct these workshops.

We had 8 workshops at various venue, most of them were Indian schools. These included DC Arya School, JP Institute of Information & Technology (Day 1), Mordern School (Day 2), Blue Bells Schools, Salwan Public School (Day 3), Ramjas School (Day 4).

Many of the Indian schools teach martial arts like Karate or Judo as one of the sports activity in their curriculums. But this was the first time for them to see Shorinji Kempo, so they took keen interest in the workshops. We were highly impressed that many female students were really interested in the techniques of Shorinji Kempo and practiced very hard in each workshop.

We also had a workshop at the Japanese School in New Delhi. There are about 2000 Japanese people in New Delhi, and they have a beautiful Japanese school out there. Principal, Mr. Otsuki provided us a gym to practice Shorinji Kempo, and 30 of Japanese boys and girls and their parents enjoyed practicing Shorinji Kempo.

On the last day, we had a workshop at NGO complex in Old Delhi. One young Japanese lady called Mika helps street children in Old Delhi at this NGO complex. There were about 40 children on that day, but in fact the numbers of street children are much more.

Initially children were little shy and hesitant to practice together, but when the work shop was over many of them had wonderful smile on their face and asked us to come and practice Shorinji Kempo again with them. This might be one of the most touching moment during our workshops and we had a wonderful time with them.

Lastly I have to mention about Mr. and Mrs. Ashita in New Delhi, who played a wonderful part in these work shops to make them a great success. Of course Mrs. Ashita is one of our team Kenshis of Shorinji Kempo in India. We hope that someday we'll have a new Branch in New Delhi, too.

 

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